Back in the 1950s, St. Louis was segregated and The Ville was one of the only African-American neighborhoods in the city. The community was prosperous. Black-owned businesses thrived and the neighborhood was filled with the lovely, ornate brick homes the city has become famous for. But driving around The Ville today, the neighborhood looks very different. Some buildings are simply rundown or abandoned, but others are missing large chunks entirely. Walls have disappeared. The bricks are gone. "We...
Nov 07, 2017•28 min•Ep. 283
New York was built at the mouth of the Hudson River, and that fertile estuary environment was filled with all kinds of marine life. But one creature in particular shaped the landscape: the oyster. It is estimated that trillions of oysters once surrounded New York City, filtering bacteria and acting as a natural buffer against storm surges. Over time, pollution and other environmental changes killed off that oyster population. But a group of landscape architects are designing artificial oyster re...
Oct 31, 2017•29 min•Ep. 282
There are a lot of Gothic churches in Spain, but this one is different. It doesn’t look like a Gothic cathedral. It looks organic, like it was built out of bones or sand. But there’s another thing that sets it apart from your average old Gothic cathedral: it isn’t actually old. Gaudí wasn’t able to build very much of his famous church before he died in 1926. Most of it has been built in the last 40 years, and it still isn’t finished. Which means that architects have had to figure out, and still ...
Oct 25, 2017•32 min•Ep. 281
The United States is one of just a handful of countries that that isn’t officially metric. Instead, Americans measure things our own way, in units that are basically inscrutable to non-Americans, nearly all of whom have been brought up in an all-metric environment. Most of the world uses meters, liters, and kilograms, not yards, gallons, and pounds. With so many industries and people crossing borders with so much fluidity, why has the U.S. not fully committed to the system the rest of the world ...
Oct 18, 2017•26 min•Ep. 280
It’s hard to overstate the vastness of the Skid Row neighborhood in Los Angeles. It spans roughly 50 blocks, which is about a fifth of the entire downtown area of Los Angeles. It’s very clear when you’ve entered Skid Row. The sidewalks are mostly occupied by makeshift homes. A dizzying array of tarps and tents stretch out for blocks, improvised living structures sitting side by side. The edge of Skid Row is clearly defined and it wasn’t drawn by accident. It’s the result of a very specific plan ...
Oct 11, 2017•25 min•Ep. 279
Among the most important advances in sports technology, few can compete with the invention of the sports bra. Following the passage of Title IX in 1972, women’s interest in athletics surged. But their breasts presented an obstacle. Bouncing breasts hurt, as women getting in on the jogging craze found out. Then some friends in Vermont had an idea to stitch a couple jock straps together to build a contraption to keep things in place. This featured story was produced by Phoebe Flanigan and edited b...
Oct 03, 2017•24 min•Ep. 278
Ponte City Tower, the brutalist cylindrical high-rise that towers over Johannesburg, has gone from a symbol of white opulence to something far more complicated. It’s gone through very hard times, but also it’s hopeful. It’s a microcosm of the South Africa’s history, but it’s also a place that moves on. And to this day, this strange concrete tube at the center of Johannesburg’s skyline continues to play the same role for newcomers that it has for decades: serving as the diverse entry point to the...
Sep 26, 2017•29 min•Ep. 277
Around the world, there is a lot of buzz around the idea of universal basic income (also known as “unconditional basic income” or UBI). It can take different forms or vary in the details, but in essence: UBI is the idea a government would pay all citizens, employed or not, a flat monthly sum to cover basic needs. This funding would come with no strings attached or special conditions, which would remove any potential stigma associated with receiving it. In short: it would be free money. There’s b...
Sep 19, 2017•29 min•Ep. 276
Coal miner stickers started out as little advertisements that the manufacturers of mining equipment handed out. Even before the late 1960s, when mining safety laws started requiring reflective materials underground, miners used those stickers to stay visible to each other in the dark mines. As time passed, the stickers evolved. They became more personal and started to tell miners’ stories. And the mine companies themselves started printing stickers for their workers. Stickers went from simple ad...
Sep 12, 2017•19 min•Ep. 275
Computer algorithms now shape our world in profound and mostly invisible ways. They predict if we’ll be valuable customers and whether we’re likely to repay a loan. They filter what we see on social media, sort through resumes, and evaluate job performance. They inform prison sentences and monitor our health. Most of these algorithms have been created with good intentions. The goal is to replace subjective judgments with objective measurements. But it doesn’t always work out like that. “I don’t ...
Sep 05, 2017•21 min•Ep. 274
Monuments don’t just appear in the wake of someone’s death — they are erected for reasons specific to a time and place. In 1905, one such memorial was put up in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, to commemorate Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had died in 1877. This week, we feature the story of an imagined plaque that could accompany this statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Nate DiMeo originally produced this story for his show The Memory Palace under the title: Notes on an Imagined Plaque to be Added to th...
Aug 29, 2017•13 min•Ep. 273
Tech analysts estimate that over six billion emojis are sent each day. Emojis, which started off as a collection of low-resolution pixelated images from Japan, have become a well-established and graphically sophisticated part of everyday global communication. But who decides what emojis are available to users, and who makes the actual designs? Independent radio and film producer Mark Bramhill ( Welcome to Macintosh ) took it upon himself to find out and, in the process, ended up developing and p...
Aug 22, 2017•28 min•Ep. 272
On the border of Virginia and North Carolina stretches a great, dismal swamp. The Great Dismal Swamp, actually — that’s the name British colonists gave it centuries ago. The swamp covers about 190 square miles today, but at its peak, before parts of it were drained and developed, it was around ten times bigger, spanning roughly 2,000 square miles of Virginia and North Carolina. And it’s understandable why people called the swamp “dismal.” Temperatures can reach over 100 degrees. It’s humid and s...
Aug 15, 2017•24 min•Ep. 271
Imagine for a moment the year 1800. A doctor is meeting with a patient – most likely in the patient’s home. The patient is complaining about shortness of breath. A cough, a fever. The doctor might check the patient’s pulse or feel their belly, but unlike today, what’s happening inside of the patient’s body is basically unknowable. There’s no MRI. No X-rays. The living body is like a black box that can’t be opened. The only way for a doctor to figure out what was wrong with a patient was to ask t...
Aug 09, 2017•19 min•Ep. 270
When the tape started rolling in old analog recording studios, there was a feeling that musicians were about to capture a particular moment. On tape, there was no “undo.” They could try again, if they had the time and money, but they couldn’t move backwards. What’s done is done, for better and worse. Digital machines entered the mix in the 1980s, changing the way music was made — machines with a different sense of time. And the digital era has not just altered our tools for working with sound bu...
Aug 01, 2017•38 min•Ep. 269
In Spain, they do the lottery differently. First of all, it’s a country-wide obsession — about 75% of Spaniards buy a ticket. There’s more than one lottery in Spain, but the one that Spaniards are the most passionate about is … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jul 25, 2017•23 min•Ep. 268
This is the story of an ad campaign produced for the 1992 Olympic games in Barcelona. Perennial runner-up in the sports shoe category, Reebok, was trying to make its mark and take down Nike. They chose two athletes, plucked them … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jul 18, 2017•52 min•Ep. 267
Most people are familiar with at least one version of the birth control pill’s packaging — a round plastic disc which opens like a shell and looks like a makeup compact. But the pill wasn’t always packaged this way. The … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jul 11, 2017•18 min•Ep. 266
This is the story of a curvy, kidney-shaped swimming pool born in Northern Europe that had a huge ripple effect on popular culture in Southern California and landscape architecture in Northern California, and then the world. A documentary in three … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jul 04, 2017•31 min•Ep. 265
The 1968 Olympics took place in Mexico City, Mexico. It was the first Games ever hosted in a Latin American country. And for Mexico City, the event was an opportunity to show the world that they were a metropolis as worthy as London, Berlin, Rome or Tokyo to host this huge international affair. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/po...
Jun 27, 2017•22 min•Ep. 264
“You should do a story…” is the first line to a lot of the conversations you have when you work at 99pi. This week we look into a bunch of those stories suggested by our listeners and present them to … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jun 20, 2017•26 min•Ep. 263
In the 1992, the Baltimore Orioles opened their baseball season at a brand new stadium called Oriole Park at Camden Yards, right along the downtown harbor. The stadium was small and intimate, built with brick and iron trusses—a throwback to … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jun 13, 2017•25 min•Ep. 262
Special introductory episode to a new podcast produced by Roman Mars and Elizabeth Joh. Professor Elizabeth Joh teaches Intro to Constitutional Law and most of the time this is a pretty straight forward job. But with Trump in office, everything … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jun 08, 2017•11 min
In 1891, a physical education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts invented the game we would come to know as basketball. In setting the height of the baskets, he inadvertently created a design problem that would not be resolved for decades to … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Jun 07, 2017•20 min•Ep. 199
In 1987, three years after moving to New York City, Maggie Wrigley found herself on the edge of homelessness. She was trying to figure out where to stay, when she heard about an abandoned tenement building on the Lower East … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
May 30, 2017•23 min•Ep. 261
The Brazilian soccer shirt is iconic. Its bright canary yellow with green trim, worn with blue shorts, is known worldwide. The uniform is joyful and bold and seems to capture something essential about Brazil. But it was not always this … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
May 23, 2017•19 min•Ep. 260
This episode was recorded live as part of the Radiotopia West Coast Tour. It was the middle of the night on March 27, 1964. Earlier that evening, the second-biggest earthquake ever measured at the time had hit Anchorage, Alaska. 115 people died. Some … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
May 16, 2017•27 min•Ep. 259
In the town of Colma, California, the dead outnumber the living by a thousand to one. Located just ten miles south of San Francisco, Colma is filled with rolling green hills, manicured hedges, and 17 full size cemeteries (18 if … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
May 09, 2017•18 min•Ep. 258
For most people, electricity only flows one way (into the home), but there are exceptions — people who use solar panels, for instance. In those cases, excess electricity created by the solar cells travels back out into the grid to … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
May 02, 2017•26 min•Ep. 257
In most wildlife films, the sounds you hear were not recorded while the cameras were rolling. Most filmmakers use long telephoto lenses to film animals, but there’s no sonic equivalent of a zoom lens. Good audio requires a microphone close … Continue reading → Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus ....
Apr 18, 2017•23 min•Ep. 256
